Lawyer: Wildstein again offers to talk on GWB scandal if he has immunity

David Wildstein, the Port Authority appointee who refused to testify last week, will talk as long as he has immunity from prosecutors and he will provide complete emails, texts and other messages related to the George Washington Bridge lane closures, his lawyer said today.

“Based upon my many years of experience as an attorney, he would be in a position to shed significant light upon what had occurred,” said Alan Zegas. “His information could be used to test the credibility of others.”

Wildstein is seen as the Port Authority executive who made the decision to close the lanes at the entrance to the George Washington Bridge in September. Last week he appeared before the Assembly Transportation Committee – under oath and after a subpoena for him and his records. There Wildstein repeatedly declined to answer questions from lawmakers citing his constitutional right to silence.

Documents Wildstein submitted to the committee included an email from Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff to Christie, where she said, “Time for some traffic in Fort Lee.”

Wildstein also provided other text messages. Included in the materials provided by Wildstein include some where Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien called the mayor of Fort Lee an “idiot.”

But Wildstein blacked out several areas in those materials, hiding who was saying what from the committee.

Christie fired Kelly and said Stepien should no longer be in the running for head of the state Republican Party last week.

Zegas said Wildstein has information that “will likely shed light on matters that others were not willing to talk about.”

“I would hope that people would view him as being willing to say what he knows about what happened and that has significant public value,” said Zegas.

Immunity is key for any agreement, Zegas said. The New York, New Jersey attorneys general and U.S. government would have to agree to immunity, he said.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, said when Wildstein appeared before his Transportation Committee, that anything said couldn’t be used in a criminal prosecution. Zegas at the time said he still couldn’t advise Wildstein to answer questions even with the assurance.

Zegas said Wildstein had been as cooperative as anyone in the investigation – he handed over hundreds of pages of revealing documents, for example.

“Anybody looking at this subjectively would say he is not trying to hide anything,” Zegas said.

Wildstein did file a lawsuit trying to squash his subpoena’s requirement that he appear before Wisniewski’s committee last week. He lost. In addition, Democrats have accused Wildstein of redacting documents without reason.

Zegas said those redactions, which covered some of the most widely cited pages connecting senior members of the Christie administration with the lane closures, would be removed and those pages would be resubmitted to the Assembly’s new committee investigating the lane closures.